Newsrooms are often the first line of defence for journalists targeted with online harassment and abuse.

To bolster newsrooms’ ability to protect their staff, IPI has developed an online masterclass for journalists, editors, newsroom managers and heads of audience. The session will present best practices for dealing with online abuse drawn from experts in more than 40 newsrooms across Europe. It aims to help newsrooms establish an easy-to-follow protocol to prevent the emotional toll online abuse can take on journalists and protect the news outlet’s reputation in the face of smear campaigns.

Structure

The session will touch upon the following four areas:

1. Building an effective protocol: Initial steps: How to audit the impact of online harassment among the staff in their newsroom and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the measures that they currently have in place.

2. Prevention: Putting systems in place to minimise impact: Newsrooms cannot entirely prevent online attacks. However, they can make them less likely, and they can minimise the harm that they can do when they do occur.

3. Recovery: Attacks will still happen. What do we do then? This chapter will provide participants with the know-how to conduct a risk assessment when online attacks occur and effectively plan out a response based on various support mechanisms, follow-up and reassessment.

4. Blueprint: Putting the protocol in practice: Eventually, the session will focus on adapting the protocol according to the resources and distinctive reality of your newsroom: What are your priorities? What can be put in place quickly, and what will take more time? How can you manage these with the resources you have? How will you communicate your plans for a new protocol with your staff?

Participants are highly encouraged to review IPI’s online course, a series of five video tutorials on how to adapt IPI’s protocol to the specific context of your own newsroom.

Meet the trainer

Javier Luque is the Head of Digital Communications for the International Press Institute, where he coordinates advocacy and communication on IPI’s digital platforms. He has worked on the issue of online hate against journalists and media organisations since 2014. His research on this topic has been quoted by media worldwide such as The Guardian, The British Journalism Review and Bloomberg News. In 2018, he directed “A Dark Place”, his third film documentary, which premiered at Vienna’s This Human World film festival. He has also worked as a consultant for the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media for their project on Safety of Female Journalists Online. Before joining IPI, Javier worked as a broadcast and multimedia journalist for local and international news organisations.